


by the way

by unholyconfessions (orphan_account)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Based on a Tumblr Post, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8122891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/unholyconfessions
Summary: Steve and Scott trade messages and pictures back and forth for a while, Natasha supervising to make sure you don’t sound like my grandfather, Rogers, according to her. (Or the “you found me drunk and crying in a bathroom because my ex dumped me and then you brought me to a taxi and insisted on giving me your number so you’d know that I got home safe and then we start texting a lot" AU.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, that happened. Unbetaed. Mistakes are my own. Enjoy it! :)
> 
> Based on [this post](http://nctaliaromanova.tumblr.com/post/150848215896/you-found-me-drunk-and-crying-in-a-bathroom-bc-my).

The men’s room is a tight 15-square-foot and features the smallest sink Steve’s ever seen. A man is braced over it, forehead pressed to the dirty mirror, and Steve pauses, his left foot not quite connecting to the stained floor.

The man looks up at him with wet eyes but doesn’t move from his spot. Steve opens his mouth, a frown tugging at the space between his eyebrows and the man does move, this time, straightens his back and sways to the side, almost loses balance. Steve reaches for him out of instinct. 

The door slams shut behind him, the sound muffled by the music outside. His fingers close around the man’s bicep. He receives a pained smile in response. 

“Sorry, do you need to…” the man trails off as if he forgot his next words, gesturing at the minuscule stall behind him. 

Steve parts his lips, shakes his head. “No,” he says, simply. He releases his grip once the guy looks stable enough to stand on his own, jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “I just needed a break.”

The man snorts. “Yeah,” he mutters, and his gaze drops like he’s too tired to focus.

“I can leave,” Steve offers. He just wanted time off from the loud music and the headache that was starting to spring behind his eyes; this guy is in worse shape than he is.

There’s a sniffle from the guy. “No, no. Stay,” he says, dragging his vowels. It leaves him with a funny accent. Steve smiles but doesn’t laugh, gives him a curt nod. 

Steve has a hard time figuring out what to do with his arms—or his feet, for that matter—in the next minute. Standing there only makes it more awkward, but there isn’t exactly a lot of space to move at all unless they want to burst the bubble of each other’s personal space again, so he leans back against the door instead, keeps to himself.

The man looks up at him and barks out an unamused laugh. Color drains from his face. He turns around fast, walks into the stall and throws up in the toilet, one arm curled around his middle. 

Steve jerks upright. “Hey, pal,” he says. “I think you should head home.”

“Scott,” the man says between one retch and another. His hand comes up to wipe away some wetness from his cheek. “I’m Scott.” A pause. “Yep, you’re right.”

Scott flushes and stumbles back toward the sink, rinses his mouth. Steve’s not sure the water is that much cleaner, but Scott is drunk enough that he probably doesn’t care. Scott wipes his face on the inside of his sleeve and pats his back pockets, then the front. He fishes out a car key.

Steve raises his eyebrows. “I don’t think you’re capable of driving right about now.”

Scott makes for the door as if Steve weren’t in the way, stumbles right into Steve’s chest. He pulls away and holds up a finger, opens his mouth. Steve doesn’t understand a word he says.

Sighing, Steve hauls Scott’s arm around his shoulders and drags back him out to the dancefloor. He scans the room for the easiest way out and spots the back door Bucky liked to use whenever he felt like having a smoke outside. Scott’s babbling, but Steve has a feeling he wouldn’t understand it even if the music didn’t drown everything out.

Steve pushes the door open with a foot, breathes in relief when they step onto the dark alley. The air stinks of the overflowing dumpster next to them.

“You’re so strong,” Scott mumbles. “She was strong too, you know. Beautiful.” He looks up at Steve, bright eyes studying Steve’s face. “I loved her hair.”

Steve gives Scott a sympathetic smile. 

He wasn’t that much better than Scott when Bucky had given him the dreaded _I can’t do this anymore_ speech. The subsequent week is merely a fog in his brain. Natasha likes to remind him that he slept hugging the toilet at her place, one night. He’s still not sure he believes her.

“I loved her, man.”

Adjusting his grip on Scott when Scott starts slipping, Steve drags him to the main street half a block away. Scott mumbles about his ex all the way there, and Steve only half-listens to it, too preoccupied with not letting Scott fall to pay full attention. They wait for a minute or two until a cab turns the corner.

He tries to push Scott inside but Scott’s not having it. He splays out atop the roof instead, presses his cheek against the yellow paint and drags out the first vowel of Steve’s name in protest.

The cabbie says something Steve doesn’t catch. 

Steve sucks in a breath and peels Scott away from the cab, hooks an arm around the back of Scott’s knees, another around his middle, and carries him inside. Scott’s head hits the door on the far end. 

Steve takes a moment to weigh his options. He doesn’t trust Scott to go anywhere on his own without falling on his head—or worse. Steve can text Sam or Natasha later, say that he had to leave; they won’t mind. 

He glances at Scott. “Scott, where do you live?”

“In a dump.”

Steve smiles. “I meant the address.”

“Oh.” Scott reaches behind him and fishes out a phone, hands it to Steve. “Here.” 

Steve uses Scott’s thumb to unlock it, manages to find Scott’s home address after a second. Scott tries to stretch as the car starts moving, kicks Steve twice before Steve helps him to a sitting position that isn’t on his lap. Scott leans his head against Steve’s shoulder, mutters something under his breath.

Steve taps _add new contact_ , fills in his information and holds the screen up to Scott’s face. “This is me,” he says, shaking the phone for effect. “I want you to text me. Tomorrow. Let me know you’re okay.”

Scott frowns and proceeds to ignore Steve’s request, “Your name’s Stan? You look nothing like a Stan.”

Steve checks just to make sure he didn’t get it wrong. He didn’t. “It says Steve.”

There’s a moment’s silence before Scott nods, seemingly pleased with the discovery. He closes his eyes, burrows closer to Steve’s side. “Steve’s good. I like Steve.”

It’s not very far, Scott's ‘dump’. 

It’s not what Steve would call a dump, either. He’s seen worse, lived in worse before he met Natasha and she got him the job with Stark. The place is kind of charming, actually. Small, definitely old, but charming. Has a small unkempt garden outside, an oversized gnome on the lawn. Part of him wonders if Scott lives alone, or if someone’s going to hear the cab pull up and open the front door.

He shakes Scott awake, slips the phone inside his shirt pocket and pats it. Scott blinks and takes an exaggerated breath, makes Steve smile when he tries to climb over Steve to get to the other door instead of using his. Steve guides him in the right direction, hears a slurred _thank you_ as Scott hops out of the cab. He waits until Scott has managed to figure out his keys, doesn’t leave until he sees Scott’s door slide shut behind him.

On his way back home, he texts Sam an apology for bailing like that, gets an annoyed emoji in response. He sends back a thumbs-up and a good night, doesn’t pay his phone much attention until it buzzes into life the next day and wakes him up from a dreamless slumber.

4:27pm, it says, and Steve groggily slides a finger over the screen, a mild hangover pulsing in his temple.

There are a dozen notifications over the messaging icon. The first few are from Sam and two are from Natasha; the others are from an unknown number:

_hello._

_hi._

_sorry._

_are you the Steve on my fridge?_

Steve rubs his eyes just to make sure he read that right. Frowning, he texts back: _what?_

The next thing to pop up on the screen is a selfie from Scott in front of said fridge, which has a pink post-it stuck to it. It reads _text ~~stan~~ steve_ in all lowercase letters, followed by too many exclamation points to count.

Steve smiles. Scott looks okay, despite the wild hair and a purple bruise that wasn’t there last night, right next to his chin. Steve’s money is on a drunken scuffle with some furniture.

 _yes, i’m the Steve on your fridge_ , he texts back before he sits up to take a half-decent selfie and press send.

Scott starts typing, stops. Does it for a second and third time before finally sending a poo emoji. Steve considers the implication behind it for a moment.

 _sorry_ , he types. The probability of there having a profound meaning behind a poo emoji is slim to none, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Maybe Scott didn’t mean to send that. _still half asleep. what do you mean?_

A minute passes before Scott replies, on an unrelated note: _what happened last night?_

 _got you a cab home. you had too much to drink_ , Steve texts back, simply. Better not to mention the crying, the puking, or the drooling on Steve’s shoulder on the cab ride to Scott’s place. 

_oh thank god_ , comes the response. Then, after a beat: _how much do i owe you?_

Steve isn’t exactly rich—far from it, to be fair, and his apartment agrees—but he was just looking out for someone who had a bad night out; it wasn’t that expensive and that amount won’t kill him.

 _don’t worry about it_ , Steve replies, and watches the unresponsive screen for the next five minutes before anxiety starts to nip at his stomach and he leaves it be, places his phone screen-down on the nightstand and catches another hour of sleep.

He jerks awake with Natasha sitting on the edge of his bed, poking his ribs. Steve brushes her hand away and groans, rolls onto his stomach to try and hide his face from the harsh light she flips on.

“I gave you that key for emergencies, Nat,” he mumbles into his pillow.

“It’s past five and you’re sleeping, Rogers. On your only free weekend in five weeks.” The sound of her stocky heels fades in the distance. The fridge opens; bottles rattle. “I would consider this an emergency.”

Steve sighs and pushes himself up against the headboard, rubs a hand over his face. He watches her pop open a beer and walk back the short distance to his bedroom. “Just tired,” he says.

Natasha inspects him for a moment before a smile stretches itself on her lips. “Really? Did you get lucky last night?”

“No!”

“Still not over James, huh?” 

In the three years he dated Bucky, he’s never heard her call him anything other than James. It didn’t bother Steve, or Bucky—Natasha’s never been overly fond of nicknames—but it wasn’t until they parted ways that he started noticing a hint of bitterness in her tone. 

He doesn’t blame her, not really. It wasn’t easy for him or her or Sam, who had to look after him when he wouldn’t even get out of bed. Natasha was there for him every step of the way: bringing him food, dragging him to the shower, spending the night on the uncomfortable armchair by Steve’s bed. Sam made sure he didn’t lose his job, convinced him to go see a therapist.

Steve swallows, looks at her. “I’m over him, Nat.”

She takes a swig from the bottle and gives his small bedroom a look. “Your apartment tells a different story.”

Steve ignores the disapproving stare from the dusty furniture and the heap of clothes on the floor, the one he hasn’t washed in a week. He protests, “I’m _busy_ , not depressed.”

Natasha watches him for a moment, the rim of the bottle resting on her bottom lip. She offers him an unguarded smile. “You’re okay, right?”

He returns it, kisses her on the forehead on his way to the bathroom. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

They head out for an early dinner, a hole-in-the-wall Russian place three blocks from Steve’s. It’s the only place that serves Natasha’s beloved _paskha_ in the off-season, and Steve can count on one hand the number of times she’s been at his place and not dragged him there. 

Steve eats his dinner and half of Natasha’s when she pushes her plate aside to start on dessert. There’s a message from Sam on his phone that he doesn’t open when he checks it for one from Scott, and Natasha teases him when he huffs out a frustrated sigh.

“I met someone last night,” he tells her when she pushes him just hard enough that his defenses crumble. Steve frowns. “Kind of.”

Natasha’s eyebrows fly up. “Kind of?”

Steve tells her about the not-so-cute first encounter, the crying, the puking, the carrying Scott into a cab and home. She looks more troubled than amused, but then Steve shows her the picture Scott sent him and she laughs, really laughs, chews on her lip for a moment.

“‘Don’t worry about it?’” she reads off Steve’s last text and makes a face. “You got no game, Rogers.”

An ominous chill shoots down his spine when she starts tapping away on the screen. By the time he manages to snatch his phone back from her, she’s already pressed send.

 _or you could pay me back with dinner ;)_ sent at 8:39pm.

She leans back against her seat with a smirk, a piece of _paskha_ held between her fingers. Steve can only stare at her and hope karma sends a mild inconvenience her way, pretending not to want to check his phone to see if Scott replied at all.

Unfortunately for him, Scott replies in the exact moment Steve slips out to go wash his hands after Natasha convinces him to partake in her dessert— _use your hands, Rogers,_ she says—and leaves his phone unguarded on the table.

Natasha simply arches an eyebrow at him, amused, and Steve accepts the phone she hands him with a knot already forming in his throat. 

_fine by me, but this is how i usually eat my dinners,_ is Scott’s reply, followed by a selfie. Steve’s brain insists on focusing on the nakedness of Scott’s chest before it computes the more important element: a girl, no older than nine, leaning into Scott’s side and smiling up at the camera, an oversized taco falling to its demise on her little hands.

An unflattering sound escapes Steve’s chest as he watches the animated _Scott is typing…_ blink at the bottom of the screen. 

_that’s Cassie. she says hi. we jumped into the neighbor’s pool._

Natasha moves from her side of the table to scoot over next to Steve, her shoulder digging into Steve’s arm as she leans in to see the conversation.

Eloquently, Steve texts back, _hi!_ and receives a picture of an unamused Cassie staring at a broken taco on the floor. Her flowery swimsuit has a blotch of sauce on it. Natasha chuckles into Steve’s arm and Steve smiles, glances at her for permission before they put on their best silly faces and snap a picture. Steve doesn’t quite manage to get cross-eyed and it looks like Natasha’s hair is in his mouth, but he sends it anyway, adds: _this is Natasha. she’s had one too many doses of vodka._

_i honestly can’t tell who’s prettier._

Natasha smiles, bumps her fist on Steve’s shoulder, says, “I like this guy,” and Steve’s _me too_ goes unspoken.

He and Scott trade messages and pictures back and forth for a while, Natasha supervising to _make sure you don’t sound like my grandfather, Rogers_ , according to her. 

Steve lets her. He’s never really dated outside his circle of friends and friends of friends—first Peggy, then Bucky—and he’s always thought that communicating through text is too impersonal. Call him old-fashioned, but he’d rather do the whole dating experience in person. 

(Not that he’s dating Scott.) 

The last picture they get before Natasha calls it a night and plants a kiss on Steve’s cheek is one of Cassie asleep on the couch, her face buried into a cushion, and what looks like an oversized jacket wrapped around her small frame. 

Natasha smiles, rubs the side of Steve’s arm and says, “Let me know how it goes.”

From inside the elevator, he sends, _Nat just left_.

Scott replies as Steve’s closing the front door behind him, toeing off his shoes: _i like her. she’s great._

 _she is._

There isn’t a response for a while, not until Steve’s stepping out of the shower and his phone buzzes on the nightstand. He wraps a towel around his hips and sits on the bed, stares at the message for a while. It’s a simple question, its tone non-existent behind the screen, but a blush manages to crawl up Steve’s neck still, for no apparent reason other than to make him uncomfortable.

_in bed?_

He reads it one more time. Worries his lip between his teeth. Natasha’s voice echoes in his head, _you got no game, Rogers._

 _shower_ , he texts, adds after a beat: _just got out._

Natasha would tease him to attach a picture, but she isn’t exactly subtle when it comes to flirting with people she’s interested in. Steve isn’t against flirting; he’s just not quite there yet.

_Scott is typing…_

A smile insists on tugging at Steve’s lips even though Steve can’t remember how to breathe. Ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it, that feeling pooling in his stomach. He straightens his back, spine cracking loudly.

 _wow, this is getting weird. count me in._ A moment later: _i mean, not in your shower. unless you’re into that kinda thing._

Steve laughs. He calls Natasha for help when he runs out of flirting ammo and she swears at him in Russian because _it’s one in the morning, Rogers, go to sleep._ Steve falls asleep in the middle of typing a response to a joke Scott makes, wakes up five hours later with a cell phone-shaped imprint on his cheek.

They don’t find the time to actually have that dinner—Steve has work, a lot of it, and Scott has Cassie _and_ work—but nine times out of ten, when he receives a text, it’s from Scott.

Some mornings, it’s Scott who texts first—a picture of him propped up against the headboard, hair messy, forearm covering the top of his face and green eyes still red-rimmed from sleep—followed by a series of emojis that Steve can’t decipher in the moment it takes his brain to recover. Steve always sends one back: of his morning coffee, or his egg white omelet, or of him on the bus to work. 

On the odd day when Steve texts first, he attaches a picture of him before he’s out of bed, still tangled up in sheets. Scott takes a while to reply but when he does it’s usually something worth waiting for—and it leaves a stupid grin on Steve’s face the rest of the day.

Every Monday night, Steve counters a picture of Scott’s latest invention at work with a selfie from the humongous gym Stark has set up at the office. Scott complains and sends him: _this is not a competition, Steve,_ and asks for another one, _for science._

It’s a little ridiculous, the way it makes Steve feel. 

Texting Scott is the first and last thing he does every day for a month.

There’s a shirt Scott wears more often in his pictures: a navy button-down that Steve mentions looks good on him, and when he’s not wearing a shirt at all, there’s a tiny mole on the curve of his left shoulder, one that Steve only notices because he zooms in. 

Scott likes coffee. A lot of coffee. In the morning pictures, in the afternoon after lunch, before bed—there’s always coffee. (How does he even _sleep_?) If the world was ending and he and Natasha were standing in the same line at the same coffee shop, there would be a physical and possibly deadly fight for the last cup. There’s no doubt in Steve’s mind.

In the background of one of Scott’s pictures, Steve notices a collection of frightening stuffed animals. It’s Cassie’s, and the rabbit’s her favorite; it’s also the ugliest. Scott tells him she has an unhealthy obsession with them. Steve makes a mental note to add one to her collection the next time he’s near the shopping district.

Between so many food pictures with obnoxious filters, he memorizes Scott’s lunch order. 

One Tuesday, Steve counts the freckles on Scott’s nose because it’s noon and Scott still hasn’t replied, and the lighting in the picture Scott sent in the morning is just _right_. 

(The answer is forty-nine, give or take.)

It’s embarrassing. 

They haven’t talked on the phone, haven’t met again since that night, but Natasha not-so-subtly starts referring to Scott as _Steve’s_ Scott, and then Sam joins in.

“Isn’t your Scott gonna call, Rogers?” 

“Yeah, man, when am I gonna meet your Scott?”

Steve doesn’t flip them the bird because they’re in a work environment and his mother raised him better than that, but he does chuck a paper ball in their general vicinity, _screw you_ scribbled in the middle when Sam opens it.

Natasha shakes her head, walks away while sipping a mug of coffee with The World’s Worst Employee scribbled on it with a sharpie. In Sam’s handwriting. Sam pats Steve’s shoulder and sits on the corner of Steve’s desk, takes a good look at him.

“Man, you look like shit.”

Steve laughs, nods. “Thank you.”

“I mean it. You’ve been working what—a month straight? When’s the last time you went out?” The last time Steve went out, he bailed on them. He makes sure he conveys that by raising his eyebrows, but Sam just waves him off. “That ain’t healthy, Steve. Get your ass home.”

“Sam—”

“Don’t worry about Stark. You know Romanoff has some pull with him.”

The look that Sam gives him is some highbrow expression that suits Stark more than it does him. Steve doesn't argue, knows that any battle with Sam right now is a lost one, and smiles.

“Thanks, Sam,” he says and throws his jacket on without bothering to leave his holster and weapon behind. Sam makes a vague _shoo_ motion in the air.

Natasha’s outside, leaning back against the wall, when Steve steps out onto the damp sidewalk. She takes a sip from her mug, watches him for a second. He smiles.

“Go do something fun, Steve,” she tells him, kisses him on the cheek before walking back inside. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket before he gets to the closest bus stop. He smiles even before he sees who it is, chews down onto his bottom lip when he opens the message to find a picture of Scott’s ever-messy desk, some kind of device sitting on it with wires and metal sticking out in different directions.

_lonely at work._

Steve looks up, catches a glimpse of the Pym Tech HQ hiding behind another skyscraper. He texts back: _yeah?_

Something twists in his stomach. Scott is right there, a twenty-minute walk away. Has been there every time Steve’s gone to work and wished they could be talking face to face instead. So close but so impossibly far, just out of reach in the midst of their chaotic lives.

 _yeah_ , says Scott, after a moment. Steve forgets how to breathe. _and bored._

There’s a particularly sore spot in Steve’s back, and he hasn’t gotten more than four hours of sleep a night in a week, but he’s not tired. Not right now. Doesn’t think he can be, if Scott would just—

 _i could come over_ , he types, thumb hovering over the _send_ button before he sets his jaw and presses it.

 _that’s a terrible idea._ Steve’s heart breaks just a little, then: _what time?_

 _now?_ Backspace. _now._ Send.

 _i’m waiting_.

Steve navigates through the familiar dark alleys of the city and makes it to Pym Tech in under ten minutes. His gaze is met by Scott’s even before he crosses the street to enter the lobby.

“Hi,” says Scott, actually says the word, real, _right there_ , and what little breath is left in Steve’s lungs is knocked right out of him. Scott touches Steve’s chest with a hand, his throat bobbing. “Wow. You’re—wow.”

Scott is taller than Steve remembers. God—it feels like a lifetime ago, when he actually felt Scott’s warm presence right beside him.

“Scott—”

“Shit, sorry.” Scott raises a hand, opens his mouth. “But I _really_ need to do unspeakable things to you right about now, so if we could just skip the whole getting-to-know-each-other thing—that’d be super.”

Yeah, yeah. Alright. 

They’ve done plenty of that. 

Steve wets his lips, nods. “Your office?”

They’re barely inside the elevator before they’re chest to chest. The kiss is less skill and more enthusiasm, and Steve parts his lips before Scott’s tongue asks for it, tastes the bitter aftertaste of coffee.

Scott’s hands travel up the sides of Steve’s waist, stop when they reach his shoulder holster. He pulls away, slightly, to look Steve in the eye.

“Is that—”

Steve thumps his head against the mirrored wall behind him. He completely forgot about that. “Sorry, I can just—”

Scott places his hand on top of Steve’s. “No, keep it.”

Huh.

Steve smiles, cocks an eyebrow. “Really?”

Scott nods, watches Steve. “Yeah. Yeah, you should keep it.” He drops his gaze to the holstered handgun and back up, raises his eyebrows. “ _Just_ it.”

Steve honest-to-God _whimpers_. It’s a little hard to ignore the way his body reacts to the idea. Not that he’s trying to. God, no. He’s never wanted anything more in his life than to get to Scott’s office so he can do exactly what Scott wants. 

It’s just… different. Different than what he’s used to. Exciting. 

Fun.

Natasha would be proud.

She’ll probably give him a medal.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are welcome. Thoughts can also go to my [tumblr](http://nctaliaromanova.tumblr.com)!


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